Question about LJ

[afuna]

If there is a feature of LiveJournal (the software - not the business) that you would love to use but can't, or have trouble using, because it's poorly designed, confusing, unreliable, or not worth using because it makes you jump through unnecessary hoops, what is it, how do you think it should work instead, and why?

Comments

[ivles.livejournal.com]

huh? which one? grrliz that made layouts in thefulcrum has long CSS too, but it's fine with the CSS box.

LJ used to limit number of characters in the CSS box, it doesn't anymore, AFAIK.

[darklyscarlett.livejournal.com]

The ones for Expressive that she made in cartonage here get a bounce from the css box. I've tried.

[ivles.livejournal.com]

I just found this page with google.com: http://community.livejournal.com/s2styles/402830.html

It seems like only 17KB is accepted at this point by the LJ system. And the style from irinafan is 23KB. However, looking at her CSS, many, many declarations can be simplified, for example these two:

#content-inner {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

#alpha-inner {
margin: 0;
padding:0;
}
can be combined into:

#content-inner, #alpha-inner {
margin: 0;
padding:0;
}

And many more tips to optimize the code, however I (cliche) don't have the time now.

And the fact that the CSS itself is already 23KB, it makes more sense to host it in ripway.com. Why? Because browser will store the CSS file in a cache and will access that instead of opening a HTML file (your LJ) + 23KB extra baggage, every *single* time. Saving time and bandwidth in your part (and people with limited internet access) and less burden on LJ server.

[darklyscarlett.livejournal.com]

Much clearer now. Yeah, glazed over the css. Grateful for the clarification. And no worries. I cribbed her code because I fell out of love with Flex and am too busy with my R/L job to learn Expressive (I haven't even seen the layout layer). ;D

[ivles.livejournal.com]

I'm not a fan of Expressive (http://ephi.livejournal.com/1152.html) myself. Personally, I think it has way too many unnecessary divs.

Which is why I struggle for a year to come up with my current layout in ivles and then the comment page scared me. XDDD

This tool (http://flumpcakes.co.uk/css/optimiser/) shrunk the file to 18KB, but they don't groups selectors with the same declarations. And those image replacement CSS can be simplified too.

I wish you good luck! ;-)